I told him the truth. And the truth started with you—from the day you came to Shanghai, how I bullied you and you struck back, how you lorded the knowledge of Reforging over me until Mother finally allowed me to learn. I told him how Mr. Gao worked our mothers, and the secret network he established thanks to their ability. I told him how mostly we Reforged through bleeding, the words bled back out, but there was this second method where only the Reforger would experience the words, no one else, and that was what I had just done. I even told him what we were doing in Taiwan, how we were working against locals like him. I told him Linda had shared what your mother did in Shanghai. And I told him every detail of what I had done in California, even though I knew it would hurt him, knew it would hurt to know about Mr. Gao and the types of people I had betrayed. But I had to tell him the whole truth. If he was to turn me away, I had to make it now. I could not bear spending more time with him knowing he could still leave me because of the pencils.

He sat up and ran his hand through his hair.

“How remarkable,” he murmured. His intrigue did not carry any anger. I nearly cried. “All this time, I was studying how we communicate. The age-old problem: How do you send a message to somebody else only they can read? And here you were the whole time.”

“Pencils can’t be the only solution,” I said.

“Yes, but the other solutions are not as . . . elegant. The Egyptians had a way of substituting hieroglyphs by altering every few symbols. But it was guessable by anyone who had enough time to sit down and take a deep look. The Greeks had a neat one, too—they wrapped papyrus in a ribbon around a staff, then would write their message down the length of the staff. They would then unwind the papyrus, which would be nonsensical without the staff. Two pieces were needed to form the message. Do you see how it is a difficult problem?”

“But it’s been so long since the Greeks and Egyptians. Somebody must have come up with a better solution by now.”

“Not an unbreakable one. America had a good one, during the Great War. They had Native Americans transmit messages in their tribal languages. I have told you already how sorry I was to hear of your mother’s passing. I am even more sorry to hear how she was used. But the world has a history of exploiting people like you, people like your mother, people like the Native Americans, for their language and abilities, and then casting them aside.